Islamic State militants ransacked Mosul’s central museum, destroying priceless artefacts that are thousands of years old, in the group’s latest rampage which threatens to upend millennia of coexistence in the Middle East.

The destruction of statues and artefacts that date from the Assyrian and Akkadian empires, revealed in a video published by Isis on Thursday, drew ire from the international community and condemnation by activists and minorities that have been attacked by the group.
— theguardian.com

The Chinese government has promised to protect a rural mountain village that contains some of the country’s oldest temples and residences. [...]

Despite designating Banpo as a protected heritage site in 2007, the Jincheng city government nonetheless allowed the Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group to displace the village later that year. [...] Nearly every building was destroyed and those that remained were left in ruins.
— theartnewspaper.com

The US Army is looking to recruit the next generation of “Monuments Men and Women” to help preserve sites and cultural property in combat zones and to advise troops on heritage. [...] It is turning to museum directors, archaeologists and preservationists to fill these posts. [...]

With extremist groups such as Islamic State using the destruction of cultural heritage as a tool of war, such expertise is needed more than ever.
— theartnewspaper.com

Unesco, which for too long has been silent on the growing environmental threat to Venice and its evident mismanagement, as revealed by the exposure of massive corruption in the construction of its flood barriers, has at last shown its teeth. At the meeting of its World Heritage Committee in Doha this June it passed important resolutions that show that it intends to call the Italian government to account and put Venice on its World Heritage at Risk list if it is not satisfied.
— theartnewspaper.com

Previously: Leading museum directors, artists and architects call on Italian government to ban giant ships from Venice View full entry »

Built in 28BC as a suitably glorious tomb for Augustus and his relatives, with pink granite obelisks, golden urns and a bronze statue of the emperor on top, it has suffered innumerable indignities ever since the sack of Rome.

Now, fenced off and often used as a dumping site for litter, and even as an unofficial public lavatory, it goes almost unnoticed by the diners who crowd into the restaurants of the square around it.
— theguardian.com

Previously: Saudi royal family could pay for restoration of Roman monuments View full entry »

Culture officials in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine have ordered museums to put their most valuable pieces into storage, and some institutions have closed to the public, as fighting continues between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces.

Ukraine’s culture ministry has also asked that the media refrain from “emphasising objects of cultural heritage” to avoid their being targeted [...].
— theartnewspaper.com

While the civil war in Syria has killed tens of thousands of people, it has also destroyed countless of the country's ancient treasures. Now a number of Syrians are trying to save what artifacts they can -- and are risking their lives to do so.
— spiegel.de

US museums are teaming up with the Syrian Interim Government’s Heritage Task Force to help protect Syrian museum collections and stem the loss of cultural heritage amid the country’s ongoing civil war.

Late last month, experts from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Pennsylvania Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center quietly organised a three-day training session for curators, heritage experts and civilians in an undisclosed location outside of Syria.
— theartnewspaper.com

The most striking Bauhaus designs, such as Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chair or the Wagenfeld table lamp, have been endlessly copied and mass produced.

But the architecture of the design school has left a more complicated legacy in Germany.

[...] reopens two of the art school's most significant houses on Friday, almost 70 years after they were bombed, the move is sure to reignite the old debate about what to do with historic buildings damaged during the second world war.
— theguardian.com

A training barracks used by Roman gladiators and the 2,000-year-old mausoleum of the Emperor Augustus could be restored with money from the Saudi royal family, in the latest effort by Italy to secure funding for its crumbling cultural heritage.

In a deal brokered by Ignazio Marino, the mayor of Rome, the Saudi royals are to provide millions of euros to pay for the restoration of some of the capital's neglected monuments.
— telegraph.co.uk

Related: Greece protests over government plans to sell off historic national buildings View full entry »

Latino Placemaking goes beyond creating great public spaces. It also includes cultural identity, which is shaped by needs, desires, and imagination. The Latino quest for cultural identity parallels the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which has its genesis in protests – many of which were carried out in public spaces.
— pps.org

There’s a movement afoot to bring new money into urban areas all over the country, and surprisingly, Phoenix, is part of that movement.

The city has long been famous for its suburban sprawl. But now, plans are moving ahead to link high-rise downtown with a neighboring Latino barrio that wealthy developers have mostly ignored for the better part of 100 years. Not a shovel of dirt has moved, though neighbors already have expectations and fears.
— marketplace.org

Non-profit organization CyArk and its partners are on an ambitious mission against time to digitally preserve 500 cultural heritage sites around the world before they are destroyed by natural disasters, human aggression, climate change, urban sprawl, and other threats. The "CyArk 500 Challenge"... View full entry »

“Protecting heritage is inseparable from protecting populations, because heritage enshrines a people’s values and identities,” she said. “Serious damage has already been inflicted on Syria’s heritage. The destruction of sites such as the historic souk [market] in Aleppo has made headlines around the world. I urge all parties to take all necessary precautions to stop the destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage.”
— Al-Ahram Weekly

Previously: Aleppo landmark Mosque, a Unesco world heritage site, has been destroyed View full entry »

Today, many Muslim societies like Pakistan are facing enormous challenges in terms of the built environment. At times construction-related activities are driven largely by economic forces with less consideration for their impact on common people and the environment. It is also observed that sometimes, buildings are constructed while copying from other contexts without considering the local context/culture. This process has posed critical challenges.
— dawn.com